Gone Too Soon: Deaths That Changed Wrestling
Gone Too Soon:
Deaths That Changed Wrestling
by Ian Hamilton
www.theianhamilton.com
www.facebook.com/ianhamiltonbooks
© 2012 Ian Hamilton
In memory of
Adam Firestorm
(Adam T. Dykes)
1976-2009
Introduction
As a form of entertainment, professional wrestling has been around for years. Whether it was the early 1900s, the era of the territories, or the modern-day period of global superstars, fans have been paying their money to watch shows and to back “their” man. Whether that was Frank Gotch in the 1900s, Lou Thesz in the post-war era, or even the modern day stars such as Hulk Hogan, Ric Flair and John Cena, every card had someone you wanted to win.
Regardless of when you started watching, whether you believed it was 100% real or not, the chances are that you’ll have sat through a lot of matches, plenty of storylines featuring numerous different performers. The highs of watching your favourite wrestlers winning titles, the excitement of (well written) storylines, and the angst caused by watching shows that don’t live up to expectations. But hey, that’s life, right?
Away from the cameras, though, another part of the real world impinges into the “fake” world of professional wrestling all too often: death. It’s a natural part of life. So is change, and throughout life, it’s only natural for the death of those around you to change your outlook on life. But how does the wrestling world react to these deaths?
Known as “the call”, it’s something that was happening far too often in the late 90s/early 2000s, and something that was rightly feared. A telephone call from a close friend or colleague telling you that someone you knew had passed on. Sadly, as time goes on, and the wrestling world gets more and more acclimated to these deaths, the passing of someone who may have been your hero goes from being headline news to a story that gets barely a passing mention in the wrestling world.
Having been a fan of wrestling since the early 90s, I’ve lived through a period where a lot of the guys I grew up watching on TV have passed on. I suppose you could say that it’s reached a point where, apart from the most extreme cases, the news of another wrestler dying barely registers with me anymore - to paraphrase Taz’s old catchphrase, “just another victim” of the wrestling industry. Most of these deaths are defined as the stereotypical “wrestler’s death” - the after-effects of years of taking steroids and other performance enhancing substances, typically ending in heart failure.
So often, whenever a wrestler dies, it’s not been a shock. For the most part, the years spent watching their enhanced bodies would have given you the tip-off as to their grim future. Although there are cases where former stars pass away through old age or natural causes, or in even rarer cases, as a result of a wrestling move gone wrong, the majority of deaths neatly fall into the aforementioned pile of “wrestler’s deaths”. As very few of these deaths happened to wrestlers who were actively under contract to one of the major promotions (WWE especially), it’s so easy to sweep these under the carpet and say that their behaviour was nothing to do with the company.
However, there are those rare times when the death isn’t to someone who made their name years ago and was living off of former glories. There are times when the deceased was still a household name and appearing weekly on television. Those are often the times when a death sends shockwaves amongst those who knew them, whether it’s as a friend, a colleague, an acquaintance or simply as a fan... and amongst those times, there becomes a moment when everyone comes together to force through change, almost as if everyone agrees that “something has to be done”.
This book isn’t an attempt to “rank” the deaths of wrestlers in any way, or indeed, to eulogise over performers who left us many years ago. To do so, especially having experienced a wrestler’s death both as a fan and as a friend, would be trivial. Instead, this book hopes to characterise the lives and careers of three men who made their living through professional wrestling, and the way in which their untimely demise changed their profession - for good or for bad.
In the space of a little over eight years, there were three deaths in wrestling which shook the industry to its core, all of which resulted in major changes to the industry itself. But if you were to have asked them, in life, whether the legacy they left to the industry was what they actually left behind, none of them would have wanted it to have happened the way it did.
Note: throughout this book, and for ease of reference, I shall be referring to companies under their current-day monikers. So, whilst I may be referring to the “World Wrestling Federation” for anything pre-2002, acronym-wise, I’ll always be referring to it as “WWE”.
OWEN HART
(May 7, 1965 - May 23, 1999)
Growing up as the son of a legendary Canadian wrestler can’t be easy. As the 12th, and final, child of Hall of Famer Stu Hart, Owen was meant to be the only one of Stu’s eight sons to avoid any sort of involvement in professional wrestling. In truth, you could say that he’d tried all he could to avoid going into the sport, limiting his grappling experience to amateur wrestling whilst he was at high school in Calgary and setting his heart on a career as a fire fighter..
Although Owen tried to forge a life for himself outside of wrestling, it didn’t take too long for the family business to creep into his life, as Owen ended up working for his family’s Stampede Wrestling promotion, which was initially created and run by Stu Hart. By the time Owen had taken his first steps into the professional game, Stampede Wrestling was a company that was just a glowing ember compared to the burning fires of their heyday. After having been bought out by the WWE’s Vince McMahon in 1984, Bruce Hart (Stu’s second son) reformed the company in 1985. As a Hart, Owen was one of the main stars in the reformed promotion, a promotion whose second wind barely lasted four years, and probably wasn’t helped by their blossoming star wrestling around the world.
Touring the globe, Owen performed for the New Japan Pro Wrestling promotion, taking on such stars as Ultimo Dragon, the Pegasus Kid (Chris Benoit) and Keiichi Yamada - both with and without a mask (Yamada would gain worldwide fame under the mask as Jushin “Thunder” Liger). Another country graced by Owen Hart’s early work was the United Kingdom, where Owen appeared on the now-classic “World of Sport” wrestling shows, with his March 1987 match against Marty Jones becoming a gem that has since been unearthed thanks to the modern-day wonder that is YouTube.
With the promise of WWE’s riches, Owen Hart arrived in the company in late 1988 and quickly discovered that he wasn’t going to wrestle under his real name. Since his elder brother Bret was starting to make a name for himself as a singles wrestler, the decision was made to not confuse fans by promoting two Hart brothers at the opposite end of the card. The younger Hart would be given a whole new character. Initially debuting in Los Angeles as the “Blue Angel” - a take on the Los Angeles Angels baseball team - Owen would later see his character’s name altered to a less identifiable “Blue Blazer”. The character would see Owen Hart run down to the ring in a blue mask, blue pants and a blue cape.
Wrestling under a mask was nothing new for Owen, as he had been masked very early on in his wrestling career in a move that allowed him to wrestle on a professional level whilst remaining anonymous - and more importantly, eligible for the high school wrestling team! Unfortunately for Owen, the Blue Blazer character didn’t get much play in a late 80s scene that was dominated by muscle-bound wrestlers, and barely six months after debuting, having made two losing pay-per-view appearances at the Survivor Series, and a loss to Mr. Perfect (Curt Hennig) at WrestleMania V, Owen chose to
leave the WWE to try his luck elsewhere.
Elsewhere turned out to be a return to Stampede Wrestling, which was limping along following it’s “revival” by Bruce Hart. Back on his old stomping grounds, the idea was that Owen’s mainstream exposure would draw new fans to Stampede’s product. This didn’t quite work, although Owen remained a big star in Stampede until the promotion closed its doors at the end of 1989. Further worldwide appearances followed, as Owen padded out his diary with shows whilst wrestling under his real name and under the mask of the Blue Blazer. Nowadays, that would simply not happen, as WWE would likely have flattened any promotion with cease and desist warnings that even dared to promote a show using one of “their” characters. Owen would go on to have a brief flirtation with the WWE’s biggest rival - WCW - perhaps foreshadowing the move his brother would make there many years later. Owen would appear on WCW’s syndicated shows, but this would not turn into anything more permanent.
With the Blue Blazer gimmick still a figurative monkey on Owen’s back, the character was put to rest in Mexico, as a result of a mask vs. mask match in Naucalpan in May 1991 for the now-defunct Universal Wrestling Association. Following the short match, the Blue Blazer was unmasked and paraded to the crowd as Owen Hart, which freed him up for a return to the North American mainstream. As WCW hemmed and hawed over a contract, the WWE swooped to re-sign the youngest Hart, this time opting to promote him sans gimmick. Instead, Owen would be placed into a tag team.
In the world of wrestling, the word “new” is virtually a kiss of death, especially when it comes to tag teams in the 1990s. Owen turned out to be one of the victims of a reconditioned tag team name, as his first assignment back with the WWE was with his brother’s former tag team partner, Jim “The Anvil” Neidhart , forming “The New Foundation”. Having been at a loose end since the Hart Foundation briefly re-formed and split in 1990, Neidhart was rescued from being a colour commentator and was thrown back into competition with his real-life brother-in-law. This team made only one pay-per-view appearance, albeit in the days when WWE only held four pay-per-views a year, with their sole appearance being a win over the Orient Express, as Neidhart left the WWE under acrimonious circumstances, jumping ship to the rival WCW promotion.
Owen, having committed himself to a WWE contract, didn’t have a choice, and remained in tag team competition where he was placed into a team with long-time preliminary act Koko B. Ware (and his bird, Frankie). The pair donned MC Hammer-esque baggy pants to become “High Energy”. The team didn’t get much success, with a loss to the Headshrinkers at the 1992 Survivor Series being the duo’s sole pay-per-view appearance, before the people in charge at the WWE opted to take Owen out of the tag team ranks and focus on him as a singles wrestler. Or at least, that was the plan, as much of 1993 was spent preparing him for a big run as a heel - Owen spent a large part of the year backing his brother Bret in an ongoing feud with Jerry “The King” Lawler, which was meant to culminate in a match at the 1993 Survivor Series, with the Hart Family taking on Jerry Lawler and his masked knights.
As legal issues ruled Lawler out of the show, the match went ahead with the distinctly un-regal Shawn Michaels and his knights taking on the Harts - a match which served only to build up to its ending (the way all matches should be!). After having lost all of his hired knights, Michaels managed to eliminate Owen from the match after Owen accidentally collided into Bret, giving Michaels enough time to get a school-boy roll-up for the pin. Shawn would later eliminate himself by count-out, resulting in the match ending and causing the Hart Family to celebrate... minus Owen. He would return to join the celebrations, only to prompt an on-screen bust-up that served to plant the seeds for the following year’s storyline.
In the immediate aftermath of this, yet another tag team was in Owen’s future, as he tagged with his brother Bret for a tag team title shot at January 1994’s Royal Rumble against the Quebecers (a pro-French-Canadian tag team, made up of Pierre Oulette and Jacques Rougeau - better known as “The Mountie”). Appearing to patch up their differences, it would seem that the Hart Brothers would win the tag team titles, only for Bret to pick up a storyline knee injury that would prevent a fresher, healthy Owen from being tagged in. The injury would see the match end, as the referee deemed Bret “unable to continue”, before awarding the match to the Quebecers. After the match, Owen attacked Bret’s injured leg, before walking out on him. As Bret was helped to the back, Owen appeared on the video screen in the arena, bragging about “kicking (Bret’s) leg out of his leg” before berating his brother for being “selfish”... and so began arguably the biggest year of Owen’s wrestling career.
Although Bret lost out on the WWE tag team titles, he did end up being a joint winner of the Royal Rumble on the same night, with both Bret and Lex Luger ruling to have eliminated each other at exactly the same time. With the winner of the Royal Rumble getting a WWE title shot, Bret was to wrestle a match to ensure that he did not have an unfair advantage ahead of his opportunity. Bret’s first match at WrestleMania X, would be against his brother, Owen, in the first match of that year’s show - a match, which Owen would claim an upset win with a blocked victory roll, as he later saw his brother win the WWE title by pinning Yokozuna in the main event.
Perhaps spurred on by his brother’s success, Owen would go on a run that somewhat mirrored Bret’s - first winning that year’s King of the Ring tournament with victories over Tatanka and the 1-2-3 Kid, before capping it off with a victory over Razor Ramon in the finals. That victory in the finals was helped by a returning Jim “The Anvil” Neidhart - whose interference had been responsible for Bret Hart’s disqualification loss to Diesel earlier in the show. The former “New Foundation” were reunited, but the tournament victory would give Owen a nickname that stuck for the rest of his career; a nickname perhaps inspired by a certain beer: The King of Harts. Having won the tournament, Owen was now placed in a prime spot for a summer-long feud with his brother over the WWE title, although whatever advantage Owen had with having Jim Neidhart in his corner was negated by the return of another member of the extended Hart family, as the “British Bulldog” made his WWE return, aligning himself with the “Hitman”.
After losing a stellar cage match at SummerSlam in 1994, Owen would prove to be the deciding factor in Bret’s title run coming to an end, during a submissions match at the Survivor Series show in November 1994. The match saw Bret defending against a former WWE champion from the 80s, Bob Backlund, with the match only ending with one of the combatants either giving up, or having the towel thrown in for them. Each man had a wrestler in their corner - Bret had the British Bulldog in his corner, whilst Backlund was cornered by Owen, with the rest of the Hart family present for the event in San Antonio, Texas. During the match, Bret’s corner man, the British Bulldog, ended up being “knocked out” after colliding with the steel ring steps. As Bret was distracted by the Bulldog’s bump, Backlund snuck behind the champion and applied his finishing move, the cross-face chicken wing. Unable to submit, or have the towel thrown in for him, Owen suddenly started to appear concerned for his brother’s safety, and started to plead for his mother, Helen, to throw the towel in. Eventually, Helen relented, and threw in the towel that had been held by the downed British Bulldog, therefore ending the match... and quickly revealing that Owen’s concern was phoney, as he celebrated the loss of his brother’s WWE title.
The Bret vs. Owen feud would continue for a few more months - Owen would play a part in Bret’s title shot with then-champion Diesel (aka Kevin Nash, who had beaten Bob Backlund for the title, just days after the 1994 Survivor Series in a match that lasted just eight seconds), as the match ended a no-contest when both Bret and Diesel were attacked during the match. Owen would go on to enter the Royal Rumble match itself, but barely made any impact, as he was quickly dispatched by the British Bulldog, ending any dreams that Owen may have had of holding the WWE title.
As the family feud was put to one side, Owen went back to becoming something of a tag team
specialist, winning the WWE tag team titles at WrestleMania XI, with mystery partner Yokozuna joining Owen to dethrone the Smoking Gunns (Billy and Bart). The remainder of 1995 would largely be spent holding the belts, before the belts were lost in a multiple-belt match at September’s In Your House event, as WWE champion Diesel and Intercontinental champion Shawn Michaels took on the tag team champions (the rules stated that if Diesel or Shawn lost, their title would go to whomever pinned them). The British Bulldog filled in for Owen Hart, who was supposedly given the night off to be present for the birth of his daughter Athena - although Owen ran in to interfere in the match (and ultimately get pinned), the fact that he wasn’t meant to be in the match resulted in the titles reverting back to Owen and Yokozuna... albeit for 24 hours, as they promptly lost the belts back to the Smoking Gunns on the following night’s taping of Raw.
Owen would regain the tag team titles a year later, this time as part of a team with the British Bulldog in what would be a precursor to the rebirth of the Hart Foundation in 1997. In the meantime though, the team of Owen and the Bulldog would have the typical “tag team falling out”, with dissension between the two which culminated in their match against each other in the finals of a tournament to crown the first ever WWE European Champion at a show in Berlin, Germany in February 1997. Still holding on to the tag team titles, Owen and the Bulldog would have a mini-feud over the new European title - a feud that would end with a massive family reunion.